From Front Office to Front Desk

Published: September 10, 2000

(Page 2 of 3)

Even as Mr. Pilevsky prepares to open the Bryant Park, he said the demand for office space would make such a conversion less likely in the future. With annual office rents of $50 to $60 a square foot, he said, ''it doesn't pay to make this a hotel.''

When the Related Companies went to contract two years ago on Guardian Life, it envisioned condominium apartments, said Jeff T. Blau, the president. But it concluded that a hotel would be the best use for the property and brought in Starwood, a giant whose brands include Sheraton, Westin and W, a two-year-old business boutique line.

Related paid $45 million for the 20-story landmark tower at Park Avenue South and 17th Street and an adjacent, modern three-story annex, which it has since net leased to MarchFirst, an Internet company. Guardian moved to 7 Hanover Square in 1999.

Under the $100 million makeover of the Union Square building, the ground-floor interiors are being recreated with offbeat touches like topiary columns that change seasonally and a front desk covered in grass. ''Our concept was to try to pull the park into the lobby,'' said Edmond Bakos, a principal at the Rockwell Group, which is designing the renovation with Brennan Beer Gorman and the Starwood Design Group.

Some spaces were too good to alter. On the second floor is an imposing hall, two stories high, 66 feet long and 35 feet wide, where the public once bought insurance. It is to become the ballroom of the W. ''What's better designed for a hotel?'' asked Brad Wilson, the general manager. ''It's exactly how you'd program a hotel, but with details that you could never afford to put in.''

These details include decorative ligatures with the initials GLIC; not for Guardian Life but for the Germania Life Insurance Company, which built the tower as its headquarters in 1911, to designs by D'Oench & Yost. (The company renamed itself Guardian in 1917 -- ''Germania'' was not exactly a public-relations plus during World War I -- but, of course, it did not have to change any of the ornamental initials.)

The grand hall, which served as the company cafeteria in recent years, is ringed by a dozen richly veined marble pilasters and columns, as thick as oak trees, under a deeply coffered ceiling with 105 wreath-encircled light fixtures. ''The room just screams, 'Wedding,' '' Mr. Wilson said, both to parents who want the soigne ambiance of the Pierre and to young couples looking for a slightly hipper locale.

The preservation of the ballroom's clear span posed a challenge to the designers, since the new risers serving the floors above had to be redirected around the space. Apart from that, the guest rooms generally fit well into the existing tower. ''It wasn't a perfect layout but it was a lot easier than we thought it would be,'' said Guy Hensley, the vice president of operations for W Hotels.

The conversion got off on the wrong foot in January with preservation-minded neighbors when crews began dismantling the red neon sign atop the four-story mansard roof without the city's permission. The work was halted for a time, leaving a truncated version -- ''Guardian Li '' -- on the skyline.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission later approved a plan to replace the sign with one reading ''W Union Square'' in the same size, color and typeface. ''The proposed signage change, essentially a substitution of one corporate name for another, would not alter the character of the building,'' the commission concluded.

Jonathan M. Tisch, president and chief executive of Loews Hotels, faced a similar issue with the 27-foot-high sign atop the PSFS tower at Market and 12th Streets, two blocks east of Philadelphia's City Hall.

For about a week, there was discussion of projecting the Loews name at night in silhouette behind the existing letters. But that idea was scrapped. ''I said, 'No, it's not worth tampering with an icon on the Philadelphia skyline,' '' Mr. Tisch recalled.

His judgment was vindicated at the news conference with Mayor Edward G. Rendell in 1997 when the project was announced. With hundreds of jobs and tens of millions of dollars involved, the first question from the press corps was, What's happening to the sign? ''I was very proud to say, 'We're leaving it alone,' '' Mr. Tisch said.

That philosophy carried over to the rest of the project, in which the bank's most memorable public interiors were restored, beginning with an entrance hall off Market Street, almost 50 feet high, where a monumental flight of stairs and pair of escalators rise up to what was the main banking room. The walls are vast expanses of Belgian black and Bardiglio gray marble, unornamented by anything but a thin, four-foot metal ring that serves as a clock. The temptation for almost any hotelier would have been to lighten and brighten this austere space. But Mr. Tisch told the designers, ''Anybody who touches this hallway is off the job.''

''All you can do by tinkering is something that isn't appropriate,'' he said. ''Philadelphians truly have a sense of ownership of PSFS. It was incumbent upon us to recognize that bond.''